Where Dark Angels Fear to Tread

Necron makes it across the wall but Meriel destroyed it, however the Necrons are starting to come over the wall. By this point there are likely 20-30 left. Some of the Necrons manage to shoot back and we suffer about 10% casualties. Then the entire top of the berm explodes with fire as the trucks make it back. All the Necrons are dead. We suffer 35% casualties.

While in her cell, Trudie gets a terrible feeling of doom. In the control room Sorin sees an enormous frothing of the water on and tells his ship to commence bombardment and then leave immediately. Everyone hauls ass to the bunker. Meriel grabs Trudie and carries her as well.

Sorin leaves to get onto the Silver Seraph to give an inspirational speech, increasing their rate of fire and moral. They have successfully done some damage to the Necron ship, but it’s still rising out of the water. They gather tech priests and send them up on shuttle. The ship gets one more pass at the Necron ship before it’s able to take order. After the next pass the ship kind of rumbles, then there’s a loud explosion. The ship hits the Necron ship squarely in the engine, and the Silver Seraph is still in one piece even though it’s damaged. The ship makes several more passes pounding the Necron ship into a pancake, and then into dust. They continue the bombing runs until the fleet shows up.

A week later the fleet shows up. They send a couple of Cobras that fire torpedoes at it and thoroughly destroy the rest of the Necron ship. Necrons continue to trickle ashore and are promptly destroyed by the Eldar. They have their fun and leave. Alexandra shows up and she’s pleased with us all. Trudie gets to go to psykona (sp?) and Angel’s characters are given the chance to settle the colony. Alexandra says Inquisitor Davodi has disappeared, the “right people” have been notified and we are all sworn to secrecy over the tech priest problem. Mira has been assigned to stay with Alexandra. Alexandra tells Meriel that she can trust her. Alexandra thinks Sorin knows way too much, but he’s acted very well, so she’s not sure whether or not to kill him. Meriel probably goes back to Ophelia 7 for a break. The party mostly goes their separate ways and the campaign ends.

Humans, 1; Eldar, 1; Necrons, ZIP

Soren suggested DeVries begin building bunkers for defense. DeVries, in his first bow to the inevitable, agrees and the work begins, mostly under the supervision of Sister Meriel.

Mail bag arrival: Alexandra says stay put and she’s on the way—7 or 8 weeks out. IG/Navy fleet on the way—5 or 6 weeks away. The Seraph is on its way with a functional lance battery but not enough crew to fire it. The Amethyst is a couple days out with more weaponry (500 las rifles, 500 suits of enforcer armor, 10 melta guns, 4 heavy bolters, and 100 anti-personnel mines. And more than a thousand highly skilled colonists.

Several days later, the Amethyst arrives in high orbit. The colonists arrive via a disassemble-able dropship. Upon disembarking, the colonists immediately begins breaking down the ship into usable equipment for the colony.

We get news the tech priest is trying to make a run for it while the Amethyst is in orbit. He manages into get one of the orbital shuttles with his credentials. The ship’s engines are warming up before Nuke catches on. He puts Nuke to sleep in mid-report. Mira, Lt. Lee, and Inola head for the ship. Lt. Lee gets there first and orders him to stand down, but he refuses. Mira arrives, warns him with a shot through the front canopy that the next will go through his head. We are advised to go for non-lethal methods and Mira passes the ball to Lt. Lee as she has no non-lethal grenades. Lt. Lee put a lovely shot with a stun grenade in through the hole Mira provided. Then we have to figure out how to get inside.

On gaining entrance, Meriel and Lt. Lee gather up the passed out Nuke and tech priest, taking them back to the container. The head tech priest is placed in confinement in order to keep him from making any other attempts to leave the planet. With other stops to make, the Amethyst leaves orbit without incident.

Trudie’s line is doing really well, sucking a large amount of the colonist’s paychecks into her account, with Xena and several tech priests getting a cut. As the colonists are arriving from the recently disassembled dropship, she spots a hideous fashion atrocity in the form of one of the new tech priests. Trudie, sensing the man’s very soul was desperate jeopardy, instructs Jeeves to remove and burn the offending garments. When the tech priest attempts to recover his robes, Jeeves power-washes him with flower-scented water. They get into it, and the tech priest marches off to get new robes. Trudence realizes he isn’t heading for her store, as directed, and follows him. The horror!

He turns and says, “Madam, I must insist you cease following me. This is the first time I have ever had to fend off a mad haberdasher.” Trudie decides this is must be xeno-heresy and tells him that he needs to come to her shop.

When he fails to show up at her shop, there is a pause while everyone stares at Varen as he passes whistling happily on his way to stand watch. Trudie goes to Soren for help in getting this tragedy fixed. In telling Soren, Sam is hopelessly offended and runs out screaming. Soren attempts to talk sense into Trudie, fails, and finally capitulates, saying he will look into it.

Not completely satisfied, Trudence goes to the head tech priest and warns him as well that the offensive tech priest fashion heresy cannot be allowed to continue. Soren, having promised to follow up (and since technically Trudie outranks him), asks Meriel to swing by and make a ‘pass’ at him. Puasing to correct his phrasing, Sister Meriel casually follows him for a short while. Extending her sharp senses, she finds that something about him is just a little ‘off’ but not in a way she can easily describe. She insists that despite the weird feeling she gets about him, she can detect no trace of warp taint.

Satisfied the new tech priest is not a direct threat to the colony, Sister Meriel begins working with the local members of the Ecclesiarchy to ensure the that Emperor’s glory is properly venerated. She then starts working with the local security forces to strategically place listening posts, heavy bolter turrets, sensor gear, and anti-personnel mines around the colony. Having seen the evidence, she is convinced there will be a a forthcoming Necron incursion from the waterline.

Trudie is voting (and campaigning) for him being Necron, or at the very least, a Necron sympathizer.

In scouting around the area, Lt. Lee found a track—an unusually narrow and long humanoid footprint. With her skill in tracking, despite the ability to hide nearly all of his tracks at a dead run, she is able to follow the prints where they disappear into the forested hills. She’s seen this before. Her old foe. The hated Eldar.

Lt. Lee managed to follow the tracks to the edge of the bluff. Leaving Mira with the squad to search the area, Lt. Lee began backtracking the Eldar tracks until Lt. Lee found a gorgeous glade. Pausing to enjoy the scenery, Lt. Lee noticed a weird shadow flow and managed to make out the masked shape of something largish and Eldar. Making sure not to hesitate too long lest she be discovered, Lt. Lee continued forward another half mile or so before turning to make my way back.

On the way back to the settlement, Lt. Lee orders the squad to remove distinguishing regimental and squad markings and let the party know to expect Eldar. And Lt. Lee get back in time to hear the beginning of xenos weaponry fire. The Necrons were invading.

A phalanx of Necron had risen from the bay and marched on the settlement. Thanks to the careful placement of turrets and listening posts by Sister Meriel, the encampment soon knew the enemy was coming. The local security forces engaged the implacable foe valiantly with their lasguns, but the technology of the Necrons proved too much. They were pushed back with heavy losses. Despite this, the heavy weapons and buried mines harassed the skeletal horde. Implacable, the Necrons shambled forward, killing anything that moved.

DeVries immediately began ordering the colonists into the bunker. The local security forces set up to protect the fleeing colonists while the party sets up an outer defensive line. Despite the well organized colony, the incoming fire from the xenos weaponry quickly causes a panic.

Mira, knowing how the Necrons operate, immediately found an ideal sniping position. She immediately opened up on them with her high powered sniper rifle. Soren then took command of the container, ordering Sam to track and kill the Necrons with the twin-linked heavy bolter turrets. Soren then moved to the roof the container and began sniping the necrons with new newly found big game rifle. Meanwhile, Lt. Lee and the IG squad picked up Sister Meriel, as many melta bombs as they could carry and jumped into two Valkyrie gunships to provide air support.

Trudence takes cover in her shop with Jeeves only to find that it isn’t terribly safe—a Necron invades, is confused by Jeeves, and is going to retreat when Trudie is unable to hold back her screams of fear. As it moves toward her again, Trudie orders Jeeves to remove the Necron’s ‘clothes’ and flees during the ensuing chaos. Sadly, Jeeves did not survive the encounter, despite his valiant attempts to improve the Necron’s wardrobe.

Meanwhile, the IG are making successful strafing runs on the phalanx of Necrons, doing massive amounts of relatively minor damage that softens them up for the melta bombs being dropped by Sister Meriel on the return pass. The improvised hotshot lasers under slung each wing lit into the advancing Necrons.

This provides enough cover and diversion for most of the colonists to reach the bunker and Trudie to reach the container, where she joins Soren in firing on the enemy.

Mira continues picking off Necrons with her sniper rilfe with impressive accuracy. Several Necrons fall to the ground without heads, out of the fight.

From the air, Lt. Lee can see that the battle is not going so well. The Necrons have almost reached the container and if allowed to reach it, will destroy a pivotal piece in the defense of the bunker. The loss of the bunker means thousands dead and the failure of their mission. Completely unacceptable. At the finish of the last bombing run, Lt. Lee spots a cluster of the local security forces hanging back in cover. She attempts to get them back into the fight via comms.

When they do not respond to orders, knows she needs to take drastic action. She drops Sister Meriel among the Necrons, and then drops Inola behind the advancing Necrons. Nuke then drops Tag over the soldiers to ‘encourage’ their return to the fight. Finally, Lt. Lee then lines up her Valkyrie for a quick game of Necron pinball.

In a spectacular bit of flying, Lt. Lee manages sends her damaged Valkyrie careening into the Necron line. She manages to wipe out all but a single Necron with her crashing gunship. Surprisingly, despite smashing her Valkyrie gunship to pieces, her expert flying allowed her to survive the impact. Sister Meriel, while admiring her flying skill, rushed towards the wreckage hoping to find survivors.

Soren, observing from the top of the container, killed the last living Necron with a single well placed shot from his plasma pistol. Sister Meriel arrived unscathed at the wrecked Valkyrie in time to retrieve Lt. Lee’s broken and bleeding body. She took her to the nearby medicae facility in the container for treatment.

The survivors had a few hours to pick up the pieces and receive treatment before word of the next wave of Necron incoming. The settlement prepared for the attack, and had barely started to put a dent in the approaching aliens when the Eldar materialized into existence. The expertly placed squads of brightly colored Aspect warriors caught the approaching Necrons completely by surprised and and laid waste to the incoming horde.

In the aftermath of two battles, smoke poured from the the once bustling colony. Most of the populace had been saved thanks to the recently constructed bunker. But the town was in ruins. One thing was clear, the Necrons were awake and very much aware of the presence of the living.

And as if things weren’t complicated enough, a lone figure appeared in front of the container. It appeared that the Eldar wanted to talk.

The IG have been guarding air traffic control, the submarine, and the motorpool.

Sister Meriel dragged Mira and on of the colony geologists out to the underwater site via the submarine. We dug. We dug. We found metal. We dug 100m away. We found metal. We dug 200m away. We found metal. Repeat, repeat.

We send a panicked communique to our friendly Inquisitor that we found a probable ship at the 2mil year mark.

Meanwhile, Trudy started a new fashion line called ‘Coloniste’ based on native furs and skins, and the terrible lack of good clothing outlets on this dump of a planet.

Varen started whistling inexplicably.

We got a communique back from the Inquisitor saying to keep the situation contained. We showed the Tech Priest. He acquiesced but was clearly upset. Mira went after him when he harumphed off.

We went to the old Ad Mech site in the mountains. The door was buried under scree but we found it and opened it with a power sword. Yay! After Sister Meriel declared it safe we all filed in. There was still power, so the lights came on via an automatic switch when we entered. The flakboard was all rotted away, so we found a secret tunnel with a large power cable running down it. Suspicious! The tunnel splits; the large trunk goes down the right and down the left we find the light cable destroyed. The damage pattern matches nothing any of us know, including the tech-priest who came along. Meriel, Soren, and Mira go down the right (lit) tunnel while everyone else stays in the intersection.

What they find: a sloped expanse roughly 2mx3m of Necron metal covered in weird alien runes. Damn it. There’s a capacitor blinking. Right as we get there, it blinks green and discharges into connections into the wall, which starts to heal itself. The tech-priest insists the party immediately melta-bomb the wall, and Mira obliges while Meriel and Soren argue about the merits of melta-bombs.

While we’re investigating, the geologist goes to take a sample from a weirdly abraded section of wall down the dark corridor.

“Oh hey, I think I see some LEDs down there,” said the geologist, and then the front half of his body turned into a pink mist, and the wall was slightly more abraded. The Major screams out a warning, and Mira grabs one of her melta-charges back off the wall, arming the other for 30 seconds.

“Fire in the hole!” Yells Mira, and the same time the Major yells for everyone to run. Varen and Major Em hold their ground while the rest of the party runs – Mira leaves a second melta-charge, yelling ‘10 seconds’ as she disappears down the tunnel. Major M damages the lead Necron’s leg, and Varen obliterates its head and ignites its arm with a well-placed melta shot. With its head melted and arm on fire, the warrior is in a poor condition. It falls forward but is still moving. With everyone evacuated, the soldiers run too. Everyone escapes just as the second melta-bomb goes off, causing a rockslide. It’s shortly followed by another, somewhat muffled ‘whump’. Major M uses a third melta charge to bring down the ceiling.

The Major and Varen remain at the site while everyone else flies back to base for an immediate meeting with the head of the colony.

DeVries laughs off the party’s threats of imminent doom, so they seek the assistance of their friendly Ad Mech ally. Despite adding information about the ship and the Ad Mech’s outgoing request to have the world declared perditio, DeVries is unmoved. He forwards the information but is not impressed, and asks for a formal report.

Meanwhile, Trudy runs into a bottleneck. So much demand, and only one Jeeves to sew! Hmm, perhaps there is another way? Just then, a Tech-Priest and his servitor entourage goes past. Trudy cuts a deal to timeshare some servitors, and have Jeeves’ programming replicated. The Tech-Priest accepts 20% of profits for his service. Zeena is getting 20% for supplying furs.

Most of the party (sans Mira) goes to Kynes’ wake. They notice the other geologists talking about an oceanic warming trend, and arguing about its source. It’s the wrong time in the sun’s cycle for warming. With some questioning, they find out that the warming has been detected around the suspected Necron ship. The party runs to DeVries, but he is once again unimpressed. There’s no way the ship can get out from under that much rock, he says, but sends another communique. So does Soren, to Alexandra.

The party takes some more advanced equipment out to the ship site to see what’s going on. The water is so heavily sedimented that it’s nearly impossible to see. A seismic charge reveals: the heavily damaged side wing of a Necron Shroud-class cruiser buried in the bedrock below.

Necrons!

Notes for 3/15/2014

We get back to the office of Peiter Devries. And we meet/report to the chief ecologist (Jan Kynes) and give him the Pennington’s Horror in a jar.

Pennington’s Horror does have internal structure and it is fractal and self-contained, meaning that every cubic meter can run independently. Kynes estimates that this is definitely what got the airboat. Experiments continue on the “goo”. Small bones, pebbles, and the remainder of a pin from a colonist are found inside.

Jen, Angel, and Matt C. stay with Kynes during the dissection of the “goo”. Jen notices an elongated skull from the crap filtered out of the creature. It represents a Necron activity or warning. So we all gather again to discuss. Based on information from Kynes, we determine that it’s possible that when the old colonists (Ad Mechs) were here, the swamp was likely land. We send a report to Davodi, Alexandra, and the Colony. And those of us who have any inkling of what a Necron is suddenly feel the need for a really strong drink.

Meanwhile, in another part of the base, Matt found a bell that summons a demon thing. Trudie rings the bell twice and is suddenly also feeling like she needs a really strong drink. Matt decides he needs a really strong SAFE, or maybe a half dozen of them, and proceeds to find them and nest the bell inside a few of the best of them.

So, we decide to go out to the site. We find the old buildings and explore. We find a sub in one of the buildings. We also find a safe. In that we find holographic thingies that the tech priest reads for us, metal boxes containing core samples, and a nuclear battery. The tech priest freaks and demands to take the rest of the data to Mars. The data crystals indicate that a fraction of the adeptius mechanicus is working against the Emperor. The message is basically “look for evidence of the masters, awake them, and give them the code.” More messages are sent out.

We get into a submarine and search the ocean. We find the remains of what is likely the missing submarine. We also find a dome. We make our way into the dome (roughly 10sq meters in size with another level buried in sediment below). Downstairs we find black and green metal stuff (Necron remains?) and a femur.

We decide to make the underwater dome a secured base of operations, and return to land. The IG, supplemented by Veren, begins a 24 hour rotation on the subs and air vehicles.

the combat play test

(not from the official scribe, so all additions and corrections welcome)

After some dithering around post-bombing, we got our heads together and set out to track down the fleeing bomber, who had escaped overland (on foot?). 2 car-loads of PCs and mooks were joined by a 3rd jeep of extra guards (who all got names and thus managed to live through the chase scene, lol) from the prison as backup. The lead dune buggy, with Zeena (Kate) driving, Major Tselihye (aka Mjr Lee) (Angel) and Lt. Degataga (aka LT Tag) doing the tracking, and Sister Mariel (Matt C) manning the big gun. Filling out the the other 2 seats were the Sgt. Major Nuke and Spec. Inola.

The second car/jeep had Matt D. (can NOT remember the character name today) and our friendly resident psyker, Anar (sp?) (Paul), and possibly a couple of guards or books (I can’t remember which, if any).

After a couple of hours of tracking and driving at excessive speeds, we managed to catch up to an encampment including our intrepid bomber. As we made enough noise on the approach to wake legions of the dead, the encampment was prepared, some debarking and others mounting resistance/cover for the escapees—to which we took offense. The good Sister, havi

Mayhem ensued. The good Sister, having the only effective weapon at long enough range, disabled the larger escape vehicle. Once the other cars got closer, most of us shot up sandbags until Nuke lobbed a grenade which disabled the opposition enough allow for capture.

Meanwhile, Matt C.’s car managed to disable the fleeing motorcycle(?) and capture the passenger, who had fallen off during the aforementioned mayhem.

Chronicle from 1/25/2014

Game Session Notes- 1/25/2014

We begin in the mine office after interviewing mine workers.

Matt D. meets with mine investigator (Degunia (sp?)). He asks him for the artist’s (Rhet Fukuroku) performance file. Then they go case his apartment and dig around. Zeena (Kate), Merial (Matt C.), and Major Tselihye (Angel) goes along for tossing. They meet the artist, who jumps out looking disheveled.

In the apartment:
– Everything smells funny.
– Books on architecture, prison, engineering, blueprints.
– Zeena finds one chaos book that seems to speak to her. Matt D. takes the book as evidence.

They grab all the paperwork and head back to the mining facility with the artist. Soon after they get there, explosions start.

Meanwhile, Paul is mind-raping people.
1. Flavia (sp?)- She’s an evil bitch. Various crimes, but no corruption.
2. Cannicus- Cannicus likes and trusts Paul. He wants to hug him. He’s not corrupted, he’s just a complete moron that does whatever he is told.
3. Traget- Booming starts before mind-raping can be finished.

The party discovers the mine is being bombed from above. The party hauls ass out of the mine with the artist.

Towards the top we hear the distant sound of lots of jet engines. We make it into a shelter above ground. Markov (Matt D.) speaks to Constantius Ehinger III. They say they are complying with orders from the Inquisition (no rank given). Arrangements are made to meet with these people.

We get on the drop ship. More drop ships are sent out to assist with rescue of any survivors.

We get to the orbital and go find General Constantius. Markov questions him on the bombing orders. Apparently someone called claiming to be working under our party’s orders. The person was yelling about a chaos incursion opening in the mind. The name he gave was Jenelle Leham. This was done over the phone from the mine site, using the mine’s communication systems about 4-6 hours from the time of the attack.

Markov listens to the recording of the phone call. He notices that the caller speaks like they’re used to giving orders, in a distinctive, high-pitched female voice speaking with a local (on planet) accent. Would be recognizable if heard again, but it is not familiar. The mining office knows of someone who came by under that passport two days ago. Her paperwork indicated she was just visiting on vacation.

Paul attempts to get into the artist’s head. He learns that one of “his assets had been called and he was rewarded for his success”. This was a few weeks ago. He then went crazy.

We go investigate the mine again to check out the video of when this Jenelle person signed in. We get a photograph of her, but it is no one we recognize. She signed in but did not sign out. Perimeter security cameras show that she was dropped off by a taxi. We get a taxi number and arrange a time to speak to the cab driver. The cab driver remembers the woman and said she came into the cab company a few hours ago and then got dropped off.

So we go back to the mine and get security to help us locate Jenelle. Tyresius gets her passport records. They were obviously falsified and the picture does not resemble the woman who signed in. We grab a local and identify a possible region that she may be from.

An odd request from the Arbites – they received a distress call from Circini VII, went to investigate, and found that there had been an accident but no evidence of foul play. But the Detective who answered the call would like you to follow up – at your convenience, of course.

Also, the lottery winners and Fortune 500 businessmen for every planet/city in the subsector.

The party discovers warp-tainted mine designs

Game Session Notes – 1/18/2014.

Please add/edit if you have notes of greater specificity than I regarding any of the incidents detailed herein.

The party, having lost the trail of the Tzeentch cult they had been pursuing due to getting bogged down interrogating several potential witches, moves on to attempt to determine the cause of a mine collapse that killed 4,000 convict laborers. An analysis of the mine’s structure and design indicates warp resonances in its geometries – resonances that might have been used to channel the souls of the dead into powering some arcane and sinister working.

Psyker Anar immediately begins an exhaustive analysis of the other mine networks in the Mining Authority records office, while Rogue Trader Soren and his lexmechanic investigate the documentation concerning the particular mine that collapsed. Sister Meriel and Zeena target the prisoners themselves, Zeena attempting to infiltrate their ranks while Muriel formally interrogates the “usual suspects” and recognized leaders among them as determined by their Arbites gaolers. Moka spends time with the guards, attempting to uncover leads via the copious application of amasec.

Soren’s work identifies the personnel file of the mine’s designer, a brilliant if neurotic engineer who Anar discovers was involved in the design of all but one of the other 3 warp-reactive mine complexes. Sister Meriel’s interrogations turn up [INSERTNUMBER] corrupted prisoners, one so tainted that she orders the Arbites to round up all of his known friends and associates. Meanwhile, Zeena successfully gains the respect of the convicts by pounding in several of their faces in a massive brawl, independently verifying the corruption of the prisoners Sister Meriel found most dubious.